


Prison Break #24

by Zinnith



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: And will bite anyone who says so, Captivity, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mistaken Identity, Rocket needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 18:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2078670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zinnith/pseuds/Zinnith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rocket has twenty three successful prison breaks under his belt. This should be easy. Until it's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prison Break #24

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to write something funny. It turned out to be something rather sad instead because movie!Rocket gave me _feelings_. Unbeta'd, please feel free to point out mistakes. See end notes for warnings.

Being arrested isn’t that big of a deal anymore. Rocket has twenty-three successful prison breaks under his belt so one more won’t make much of a difference. What’s really stupid is that he didn’t even _do_ anything this time. Unless ‘drinking while furry’ is a crime. Which it may be on this planet, who the hell cares. 

Anyway, he’s pretty drunk at the time so he’s not really paying attention to what’s going on, and it’s not until the two uniformed guys who have been arguing with the bartender about Health and Safety for the past five minutes starts gesturing toward Rocket that it dawns to him that maybe there’s some kind of problem here and that it might possibly involve him.

Then someone grabs him by the scruff of his neck and pulls him from the bar and that’s when Rocket sort of explodes a bit because to begin with, it _hurts_ , pulls at the scar tissue and the implants on his back, and also, you don’t just go picking people up without their explicit permission. 

It’s in situations like these when Groot really comes in handy. Or would come in handy if he was his old self. As it is, he’s barely grown enough to make it out of the pot and prefers to stay on the Milano under the sunlamps Rocket rigged up for him. 

By the time the stun stick comes out, Rocket is vaguely regretting not taking Quill up on the offer of a drinking buddy for the night. That’s the last thing he knows for a while.

* * *

He wakes up hungover, aching and naked. When he tries to stand up, he hits his head on what turns out to be the roof of a cage. Rocket gets the feeling that he’s not going to like this one bit.

A more thorough inspection of the immediate area yields a bowl of water, a bowl of what seems to be some kind of pet food, and a blanket. The cage is not big enough for him to comfortably stand upright and it’s already making his back hurt. 

His is not the only cage in the room. There are at least twenty more, about half of them occupied by animals in all sizes and shapes and the room is echoing with barks and yowls and hisses. Not unusual - many animals get uneasy around Rocket, like they can sense that there’s something about him that’s not quite right.

The noise is giving him a headache and he’d really like his pants back, so he starts banging his fists against the grate, shouting, “Hey, let me out! And give me my stuff back! I’ve got rights!” 

To be perfectly honest, Rocket has never been able to figure out his exact legal standing other than ‘frequently incarcerated’, but he’d also very much like to find the d’ast moron who decided he ought to be in an animal shelter. Plus, the conditions are usually better in prison. At least there would be proper toilets. Maybe they’re planning to take him for walkies, he muses, and then has to keep back the slightly hysterical laughter that threatens to burst through his mouth.

It takes a good long while for anyone to react, during which time the purple fuzzball in the next cage seems to be having some kind of stressed-out and very loud meltdown. Screw the pants. Rocket needs his _gun_.

The uniforms who finally enter the room are not the same ones who captured him in the bar. They seem a little friendlier to begin with and one of them even smiles when she catches sight of Rocket. 

“Hello there little guy,” she says, and the tone of voice is friendly as well, but the kind of friendly that immediately gets his hackles up. “Why don’t you all try to get along in here?”

“Why don’t you _let me the hell out_ of here?” Rocket counters, rattling the cage. 

The two guards share a very long and confused look and the other one uncertainly clears his throat. “Um, well. Yes. As soon as we find your owner and the fines have been paid.”

And that’s when Rocket explodes a little bit again, breaking into a long hissing spitting rant ending in “...get me out of here and give me my _gun_!” 

The guards exchange another one of those looks and then they seem to come to a silent mutual agreement that talking animals do not exist and that Rocket is therefore not actually talking.

One of the guards opens the purple fuzzball’s cage and scratches its ears until it’s calmed down some.

The other one tries to cautiously pet Rocket exactly once. Rocket bites him. He will not tolerate being petted. (Except maybe sometimes, under extreme circumstances, and no one will ever mention it again. Or at least, Rocket never mentions it and Drax has learned not to, unless he wants to find explosives in his bed again.)

After that, the guards mostly leave him alone, unable to figure out what to make of him. He supposes it makes sense. Rocket tried to figure out what to make of himself for a long time after the Change before he gave up and decided to just get on with it. 

In many ways, a prison would be preferable, not only for the plumbing. In prison, there are things to work with, people to ally with, all kinds of resources. In here, there’s nothing. The food and water bowls are made of metal and unbreakable. The latch to the cage is too far out of Rocket’s reach, and the bars in the grate can’t be forced apart no matter how hard he tries. The guards threaten him with the stun stick until he settles down and they ignore his demands for a bathroom break. In the end, he goes in a corner of the cage and covers it up with the blanket.

The sad thing is, this isn’t even the most humiliating experience of his life so far.

* * *

At night, the shelter is spooky, with a horribly familiar feeling to it. Rocket doesn’t have a lot of memories from before the Change, before he was Rocket, but he remembers a room very similar to this, filled with cages and small breathing bodies in the darkness. This place doesn’t smell quite as much of pain and fear, but it still brings back things that usually make Rocket want to go out and blow something up with extreme prejudice. 

He doesn’t have that option so he curls up on the cage floor instead, pulls his tail over his ears and tries to shut it all out.

At least there are people around to miss him these days. Sooner or later, someone on the Milano will start wondering where he is and come find him. Hopefully sooner. 

There are times when he wonders if there was ever anyone to miss him before the Change. How he came to end up where he did. If that life was better than the one he has now. Those are not the kind of thoughts that he ought to be thinking here in the middle of night. Those are the kind of thoughts that’ll bring whispers of _vermin_ and _monster_.

Rocket would like to just go to sleep and pretend that things’ll look up in the morning, but no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t. Maybe it’s for the best. At least he won’t have to deal with the nightmares. 

He misses Groot.

* * *

Morning brings breakfast for everyone but Rocket - he refuses to touch the mush in the bowl, no matter how hungry he is. It smells vile and probably tastes even worse. He does swallow enough pride to drink some water when no one’s looking, and then makes yet another failed attempt to convince the guards that he should be let out of the cage. 

Twenty-three successful prison breaks and he finds himself bested by an animal shelter. The crew will make fun of him for ages.

It’s somewhere around mid-morning when Rocket is interrupted in his twelve hundredth inspection of the seams in the cage, hoping to find some kind of weakness, by a very familiar voice from some adjoining room.

“Rock? Rocket? Are you in here? What’d you do to him?”

That’s Quill, and by the sound of it, Rocket has officially been discovered missing. It shouldn’t be such a relief, he took care of himself for years even before Groot came along, but there is a very small part of him that wants to celebrate.

“Here!” he shouts. “I’m in here! Get me my gun, I need to hurt someone!”

The door slams open and one of the guards come through. He’s walking very slowly and very carefully, probably due to the fact that Gamora is holding a knife to his throat.

“But… but… there are fines and he should have a chip,” whines the guard, who apparently doesn’t know when to shut up. 

Quill turns up behind them. “He’s a _person_ , dickbag, not some pet. Oh, the Nova corps are so gonna get on your ass! Rock?”

“Over here.”

Rocket is fairly sure he’s never been so glad to see anyone in his life. He’s also pretty sure he’s never been so embarrassed in his life. There are drunken revelations and then there is _this_ , being locked up and stripped bare and treated like some… some stupid _beast_ , in front of people he kind of (oh he’ll never admit this out loud) respects. 

It’s Gamora who comes walking over. Any moment now, she’s going to start laughing and Rocket stubbornly locks his jaw in preparation. Gamora is a friend and friends get to make fun of each other. Also, she has the key to the cage, which he guesses could be worth some jokes at his expense.

But the laughter never comes. 

“Are you all right?” she asks as she unlocks the door, not the least bit of ridicule in her voice, only anger and some concern. 

It takes a second for Rocket to adjust to that. He stretches and gets out, legs and back aching from the cramped position in the cage. “‘Course I’m all right,” he snorts. “Why wouldn’t I be? What the hell took you so long? Where’s my gun, I wanna shoot someone!”

If Gamora sees through it, she doesn’t say anything. She simply takes off her jacket and slips it around his shoulders where it rests, far too big and still warm from her body heat, and it probably shouldn’t make him feel this grateful. Ever since the Change, when he first woke up to find himself in possession of a sense of identity, the idea of walking around without clothes has just felt wrong. It’s not just that the ugly implants and scars draw too many stares when left uncovered. It’s… a feeling of being civilized, he guesses. Animals don’t wear clothes, but people do.

“Found your gear!” Quill announces, waving a box he just plucked out of the other guard’s hands. He’s silently fuming and the guard steps back very quickly. “Let’s get out of here.”

And it’s enough to send another jagged and uncomfortable spear of gratefulness through Rocket’s black little heart, not unlike the thing he and Drax don’t mention. Rocket has been plenty angry. Other people have been plenty angry with him, for a multitude of reasons. But this is the first time he can remember that anyone else has been angry on _his behalf_. He could get used to that.

* * *

The walk back to the Milano is uncomfortable. Rocket’s legs and back are still cramping from not being able to stretch out properly for so long and it _hurts_. There are times when he suspects that his hind legs weren’t really designed for walking upright because every now and then he’ll feel the strain so acutely that all he really can do is curl up somewhere and listen to Groot humming something ancient and comforting until it passes. He’ll be damned if he’s going to say anything though. It’s just one more thing to deal with and move on. 

But Quill seems to notice, and it’s beyond annoying how someone so clueless can be so damn perceptive at the worst possible moments.

“Want a ride, buddy?” he asks, reaching out an arm. 

Rocket glares in return. He’s got his gun back and he’s wanted to shoot something for the past day and night. At this point, it might as well be Quill. “I can walk,” he snarls, even as a pang of pain shots all the way from his back paws to the tip of his tail.

Quill just shrugs. “‘Course you can. All I’m saying is, you don’t have to.” 

And it might be that he’s going soft. Or that he spent the night in a cage, doing his best to shut out memories of blood and pain and the agony of a grotesque second birth into whatever he is now. Or that his legs are really hurting. 

In the end, Rocket climbs up Quill’s arm to perch on his shoulder. And if his tail happens to curl a little bit around the back of Quill’s neck, well, that’s just so Rocket can keep his balance. At least that’s what he’ll tell anyone who asks.

\- fin -

**Author's Note:**

> Memories of past trauma (experimentation, body modification), humiliation. Treating an intelligent animal like... well, an animal.


End file.
